


Distance, close

by Kit



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The Time of Angels, Episode: s05e05 Flesh and Stone, Episode: s06e01, F/M, The Impossible Astronaut Episode: s06e02 Day of the Moon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-10
Updated: 2011-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-19 06:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>You would think, he cannot help but think—wild, swift, shuddering hilarity—that he would know where to put his hands.</em></p><p>The Doctor flails. Spoilers for Day of the Moon</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distance, close

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PeroxidePirate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeroxidePirate/gifts), [cranky__crocus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cranky__crocus/gifts).



You would think, he cannot help but think—wild, swift, shuddering hilarity—that he would know where to put his hands.

They’re big hands, after all. _Clever_ , big hands, except that this is like Amy all over again—no, it’s not. That’s rubbish. This is _nothing_ like Amy cornering him—save the cornering bit. A great deal of cornering all around—because Amy was nervous and a little bit exhilarated and mostly terrified of something that had nothing to do with him, so all he had to do with his hands was push her away. Small distance. Safe distance.  Raggedy Doctor, and too daft for this.

But River Song takes up distance like it’s wire or wool—which, of course, it isn’t:  but she spools it out and draws it back in again, their timelines far and close. _Close_ now, of course. Her belly close against him, heat drawn there and out through the rest of her skin, hair—they both have _mad_ hair—ticking his face. The kiss is _skill_.

Not his skill. River has grabbed their distance and bent it, let it get all warm and pliable in her hands and is just _there_ , drawing him in and he’s sure he must have felt something this good, otherwise she wouldn’t be kissing like that—though River is, perhaps, the only person who might kiss another for the first time as if all other attempts were practise runs just for you.

Meanwhile, muggins here doesn’t know what to do with his hands. When they finally reach her shoulders, when he feels the back of her neck with the edge of one palm, and when he just lightly returns what has been given so expectantly, there is a _noise_ she makes that’s more a feeling. Deep and warm and nothing like all the flirting and the jibes—though he loves _those_ dearly. He knows that now—has come to know it. This is at least one love they share.

She kisses him, and behind his eyes he doesn’t just see her in killer heels from the 20th century and camouflage from the 51st, or the hard-edged grief that frightened his previous lacerated self. He sees all that, _feels_ other things. The sights that haven’t happened yet. Same hair. Same lips. Same _skill_? He has so much left to learn, with River kissing him, that he is sure that even reading her little blue book wouldn’t fix it.

And somehow she knows this, when he pulls away. He has taken too long. Flailed too much. Brief touch and sweetness does not stop the realisation in her mouth and eyes, or the ignorant apology in his.

 _Don’t_ _change one bit of us_ , she’d said. But he knows she doesn’t remember that, now.


End file.
